Six miles off the coasts of southern New Hampshire and Maine, Appledore is the largest island in the Atlantic archipelago known as the Isles of Shoals. Childe Hassam (1859–1935), the foremost American impressionist of his generation, spent the three decades between 1886 and 1916 exploring Appledore. It was here that Hassam found a reliable and welcome retreat from urbanity as well as ongoing creative stimulation that inspired him to produce artistically new responses to beloved and familiar subject matter.